New Orleans' Multicultural News Source | The Louisiana Weekly2018-02-20T19:25:17Zhttp://www.louisianaweekly.com/feed/atom/WordPressadminhttp://www.louisianaweekly.com/?p=278122018-02-19T18:12:34Z2018-02-19T18:12:34ZContinue Reading »]]>Xavier University, Dillard University and Southern University at New Orleans, New Orleans’ three historically Black universities, and Tougaloo College in Mississippi, another HBCU, will see about $330 million in post-Katrina debt owed to the federal government cleared under a provision in a congressional budget deal signed by President Donald Trump.

Dillard, Xavier, SUNO and Tougaloo College borrowed the money in 2007 from the U.S. Department of Education as they struggled to deal with crippling blows dealt by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and devastated the Gulf Coast.

The New Orleans Advocate reported that little of the loans had been paid back over the past decade, as most of the universities tried to regain their footing and boost enrollment. Payments were suspended in 2013 under a provision inserted into a 2012 spending bill by former U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu but the five-year loan forbearance period was set to expire in April, putting pressure on the universities. Each potentially faced millions in debt payments to the federal government.

“It would’ve been crippling,” said Dr. Walter Kimbrough, the president of Dillard University, which borrowed about $160 million after several feet of water inundated its Gentilly campus.

Xavier University borrowed $165 million through the program, while SUNO took out $44 million and Tougaloo borrowed about $28.5 million, according to U.S. Department of Education data compiled by The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reported in 2017 that the four historically Black institutions together had paid back about $12.4 million.

The loans’ forgiveness brings to a close years of lobbying by the institutions and elected officials from Louisiana and Mississippi. The provision wiping away the debt was included in the budget deal’s massive $90 billion disaster-relief package primarily geared toward communities devastated in 2017 by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria.

“My predecessor, Dr. Victor Ukpolo, and I have been working with the other three universities for some time to make the case for this forgiveness,” SUNO Chancellor Lisa Mims-Devezin told The New Orleans Advocate. “Attempting to pay off the loan would have caused an additional decrease in available funds and would have required significant budget cuts, termination of programs and employee layoffs.”

The chancellor also noted that the vast majority of other Katrina federal loans have already been forgiven.

“This loan forgiveness will allow Xavier University to provide academic excellence to all of our students, today and into the future,” said Dr. Reynold Verret, president of Xavier University of Louisiana. “We would like to thank the members of the House and Senate from Louisiana and Mississippi who worked diligently to secure this legislation so that our historic institution can continue our work of contributing to a just and humane society.”

Louisiana’s congressional delegation, including Rep. Cedric Richmond of New Orleans and Sen. Bill Cassidy, worked with the presidents of the universities on the issue, Kimbrough said.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican whose committee wrote the bill, played a key role in including the provision in the text.

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

After meeting with about 4,000 residents over the course of a year, state leaders are working on a report that could reimagine how communities in southeastern Louisiana deal with coastal erosion and sea-level rise.

If some of the proposed policies become reality, residents in coastal areas at risk of serious, repeated flooding could become part of a massive effort to encourage them to relocate to higher ground.

• Create a buyout program so residents can move out of those high-risk areas.

• Phase out the homestead exemption for property taxes in high-risk areas outside levees and floodwalls.

• Require new commercial developments to have bonding that will pay for demolition at the end of their useful life or long-term vacancy.

• Require certain communities to participate in a program that lowers flood insurance rates if they limit development in flood-prone areas and encourage flood-resistant construction.

Some of those ideas are controversial.

“It’s patently clear to anyone who lives here that all of these proposals are against the residents’ interests,” Plaquemines Parish President Amos Cormier III said. “Just put yourself in that position. It’s the same as your home being condemned.”

Besides housing, the proposals deal with transportation, the economy and the state’s fishing and tourism industries.

The upcoming report drawing on these ideas could be an important framework for how Louisiana deals with one of the highest rates of sea-level rise in the world, coupled with the loss of 10,000 acres of land every year.

But the state still has a long way to go before it sets any policies. Given Louisiana’s continual budget shortfalls, funding is far from certain.

“We’re not going to land on anything final until we have a lot of discussions with a lot of different people and we understand … if something makes sense in a particular place or doesn’t,” said Mathew Sanders, an official with the state Office of Community Development. “We’re just not there yet.”

Sanders said the state is not pursuing a mandatory resettlement program, even in portions of the coast projected to experience up to 14 feet of flooding during 100-year events. Such storms have a one percent chance of occurring in any year, or a 26 percent chance of occurring over the course of a residential 30-year mortgage.

“There’s certainly a lot of apprehension to any idea that we would be moving people by the tens of thousands across a huge swath of the coast. That is not something we have even talked about, let alone proposed,” Sanders said. “That certainly is not a popular idea.”

In 2010, about 80,000 people lived in areas that in 2067 will be deemed to be “high-risk,” meaning a 100-year flood would bring more than six feet of water, according to the Office of Community Development.

In December, Bloomberg reported that the state is planning to “empty out its coastal plain.” The state Office of Community Development published a statement saying that’s not true, and Sanders and other state officials said they’re not done with the report yet.

But they do have a list of 70-some “recommended policies” that could be part of the report. The proposals point to a strategy of limiting development in the most vulnerable coastal communities and making it more expensive for people who remain.

Sanders said those proposals are the product of a “ground up” approach: about 70 meetings with residents and other community members in six coastal parishes. Those parishes — Terrebonne, Lafourche, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. John the Baptist and St. Tammany — suffered significant damage from Hurricane Isaac in 2012.

The meetings were held by Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for Future Environments, or LA SAFE, a community planning process organized by the state Office of Community Development, where Sanders works, and the Foundation for Louisiana.

Mark Davis, director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy, said the proposals show that residents realize they’ll have to make difficult choices if their communities are to adapt to the dual threats of land loss and rising water.

“We cannot implement government planning if we do not create the capacity to do it,” Davis said. “It seems to me the civic groundwork is being laid.”

Flood Risk Would Factor Into All Sorts Of Government Decisions

The report, due out later this year, will lay out a regional adaptation framework with recommended policies and projects, along with a pilot project and an individualized plan for each parish.

Right now, the proposals exist as part of a four-page document made public at meetings in the six parishes. The presentation describes the planning process and lists about 70 proposals in five different categories: stormwater management, housing and development, transportation, education, economy and jobs and culture and recreation.

Among the ideas:

• Require the state to account for flood risk before designing transportation routes, and retrofit existing ones to deal with flooding.

• Incorporate ferries into evacuation plans.

• Improve training in careers related to the coast, and diversify the local economy by giving tax rebates to use renewable energy.

• Require new housing developments to be built at least two feet above base flood elevation.

• Offer financial incentives to elevate homes and fortify them against strong winds.

• Build recreational facilities that mitigate flood risk.

• Create a state Office of Resilience to oversee these efforts.

Sanders said the policy recommendations were compiled by an LA SAFE planning team, based on discussions at those meetings.

“People have talked about the problems they have been facing as a result of some of the changes in landform and flood risk that have been happening over time,” Sanders said, “and how they would anticipate those problems becoming exacerbated as we projected it out in the future.”

Some places would see catastrophic flooding. About 2,400 structures could be subjected to flood depths of more than 14 feet and could be bought out by the state.

Those predictions come from the latest version of the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan, a blueprint to rebuild the coast and protect some of what’s left.

The 50-year, $50 billion Master Plan largely relies on pipelines, massive river diversions, levees and floodwalls. It also calls for roughly $6 billion in “nonstructural” projects: elevating, flood-proofing or buying out homes.

The LA SAFE process is designed to be a framework “leading they way” for the nonstructural portion of that plan, said Pat Forbes, executive director of the state Office of Community Development.

But the $40 million LA SAFE planning grant is paltry compared to the $6 billion it would cost to elevate, flood-proof and buy out homes and businesses.

Ultimately, Forbes said, it will be up to local, state and federal officials to decide if they want to implement the ideas.

“Any ideas that bubble up out of this process will wind up being part of those reports, which is for anybody,” Forbes said. “It’s for the CPRA [Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority], for the Coastal Master Plan, for the individual parishes themselves — for anybody working in the coast. It will be things for them to consider.”

‘It’s Not Going To Be Painless’

The draft plan with recommended policies was supposed to be finished in December. Sanders said that didn’t happen. The final report is supposed to be finished by March, but Sanders said that, too, could change.

By the end of the process, the six parishes will have their own individual plans and partially funded pilot projects to help their communities adapt.

Ultimately, officials hope the report, along with the completion of six community-based projects, will serve as a model for coastal areas elsewhere threatened by climate change.

Coastal experts say the proposals signify that some residents and state officials recognize that bold solutions are needed if the state is to prepare for the coastal changes underway.

“The toolbox right now is pretty crummy,” Davis said, referring to policies to plan for coastal erosion and sea-level rise. “It’s going to need to get better, and it’s not going to be painless, not by a long shot.”

That was evident from Cormier’s reaction.

He compared it to Le Grand Dérangement, the forced removal by the British of the Acadian people from Canadian provinces in the 1700s, which resulted in many Cajuns settling in Louisiana.

“I guarantee you none of this is coming from my administration,” Cormier said after reading some of the proposals. “How anyone can claim that anyone who has homes and businesses in this region would agree to such draconian terms is ludicrous.”

Tulane Study Predicted Massive, Climate-Driven Migration

Though these discussions have only recently come into view, researchers and state officials have been working for some time to deal with the crisis facing Louisiana’s coastal communities.

In December, the state entered negotiations to purchase a 515-acre sugarcane farm near Thibodaux to resettle the residents of Isle de Jean Charles. The lone road to the quickly-sinking island in south Terrebonne Parish is regularly inundated by floodwaters.

A $48 million federal grant will move residents, who are members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, about 40 miles northwest, an area less vulnerable to flooding. Sanders is leading that effort.

In 2014, the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy concluded that many residents will eventually have to leave southeast Louisiana, whether they are forced out or given incentives to leave.

Its report warned that in this century, climate-driven migration would happen “on a scale never before experienced in human history.“

The 2017 iteration of the Master Plan calls for flood-proofing 1,398 businesses and elevating 22,432 homes.

It includes voluntary buyouts for 2,403 properties, but the state doesn’t identify where they are and says it doesn’t have funding to put the plan in action.

There may be other roadblocks, too, outlined in the 2014 Tulane report. It said voluntary relocations and government-run resettlement efforts have been the product of “failed government intervention” and have been hamstrung by public distrust.

Corey Miller, the community engagement director for the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, said residents probably will be more receptive to changes that come out of the LA SAFE process because they have had a hand in it.

“It’s community-driven action to address the challenges of our land loss and our changing coast,” he said.

Bren Haase, Chief of the Planning and Research for the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, agreed that the LA SAFE process is valuable because residents are taking part in the initial stages of the planning process.

He said the coastal restoration authority may be interested in incorporating some of the proposals into its Coastal Master Plan.

“These are very personal, emotional conversations that need to be driven on a local level,” Haase said. “Insomuch that local residents and communities are interested in these things, then yeah, we are interested in advancing them.”

Haase said there were a number of technical issues to work through first, however, before the state could even think about implementing the policies. One of them is identifying which entity would put the ideas into action — and which one would have the money to carry them through.

“It’s extremely difficult,” Haase said. “It requires the science, the education, the means and will to be able to accomplish the projects. Those things don’t often line up.”

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) — Anytime you go to the doctor, typically the first things that he/she begins to measure are your Vital Signs.

Do you know what Vital Signs are and what the normal range for an average adult should be? Vital signs are used to measure the body’s basic functions. These measurements are taken to help assess the general physical health of a person, give clues to possible diseases, and show progress toward recovery. The normal ranges for a person’s vital signs vary with age, weight, gender, and overall health. There are 4 main vital signs: body temperature, blood pressure, pulse (heart rate), and breathing rate.

Temperature — the baseline for the body’s core temperature at which it functions under normal conditions. The body and its systems are constantly burning energy and temperature is tightly controlled. This process is called Thermoregulation. The average adult temperature is approximately 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The purpose for checking body temperature is to check for an increased temperature; which is an indication that the body is fighting and infection. Any temperature that is higher than a person’s average body temperature is considered a fever. A drop in body temperature below 95 degrees Fahrenheit is defined as hypothermia. Remember, temperature can vary due to factors other than illness or infection. Stress, dehydration, exercise, being in a hot or cold environment, drinking a hot or cold beverage, and thyroid disorders can also influence body temperature. Because older adults do not control body temperature as well as younger adults, older adults may be ill without ever displaying signs of a fever.

Pulse/Heart Rate — the expansion/contraction of an artery and is typically measured on the body at the wrist or ankle. The measure is counted in beats per minute and the average for an adult is 50-80 beats per minute. A normal pulse rate for a healthy adult at rest ranges from 60 to 80 beats per minute. Women tend to have faster pulse rates than men. A faster than average pulse can indicate such health problems as infection, dehydration, stress, anxiety, a thyroid disorder, shock, anemia, or certain heart conditions. A lower than average pulse may also be a sign of a heart condition. Some medications, especially beta blockers and digoxin, can slow your pulse. A lower heart rate is also common for people who get a lot of exercise or are athletic.

Blood Pressure — consists of two readings, a high systolic reading (which occurs when the heart contracts) and a lower diastolic reading (which occurs when the heart is at rest). Blood pressure is the measurement of the pressure or force of blood against the walls of your arteries. Blood pressure is written as two numbers, such as 120/80 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg). A normal reading for an adult would be 120 systolic over 80 diastolic. A systolic pressure of 120-139 or a diastolic pressure of 80-89 is considered “prehypertension” and should be closely monitored. Hypertension (high blood pressure) is considered to be a reading of 140/90 mm Hg or higher. Blood pressure that remains high for an extended period of time can result in such health problems as atherosclerosis, heart failure and stroke. Keep in mind that the blood pressure stations often available at drug stores and grocery stores are not considered accurate measures of your blood pressure.

Respiratory Rate — the process of breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide is called respiration. The average respiratory rate for an adult is 16 to 20 breaths per minute. A person’s respiratory rate is the number of breaths you take per minute. The normal respiration rate for an adult at rest is 12 to 20 breaths per minute. A respiration rate under 12 or over 25 breaths per minute while resting is considered abnormal. Among the conditions that can change a normal respiratory rate are asthma, anxiety, pneumonia, congestive heart failure, lung disease, use of narcotics or drug overdose.

In addition to the basic four primary vital sign readings, doctors typically also include readings for height and weight as a measure for general health and BMI (Body Mass Index).

Height — is measured in inches with your shoes removed. Height is monitored for infants/toddlers/adolescents to ensure they are on the correct growth curve. For adults, height is monitored as an indication for bone loss during the beginning stages of osteoporosis.

Weight — is measured in pounds and determines total body weight. This number can be used in conjunction with your height to determine your BMI (Body Mass Index), which can determine on a general scale, if one is underweight, normal weight, overweight or obese. Keep in mind that the BMI does not calculate muscle weight vs. fat weight.

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

]]>0adminhttp://www.louisianaweekly.com/?p=278092018-02-19T18:12:28Z2018-02-19T18:12:28ZContinue Reading »]]>The U.S. Constitution guarantees every citizen who has been charged with a crime the right to a speedy trial. Unless, of course, you live in New Orleans.

Kevin Smith, 51, found that out in the worst way possible.

Eight years ago, in February 2010, he was arrested after Louisiana State Police and federal agents raided his Carrollton home and reported that they found baggies of crack cocaine inside a safe.

Sunday, Feb. 11, marked the eighth anniversary of that arrest and he has yet to stand trial.

For most of that time, he has been languishing in a privately run prison in Ferriday, La. despite a judge’s ruling last November that his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been denied and the charges stemming from the crack-cocaine arrest were dismissed.

Smith remains behind bars after a parole hearing was cancelled last year.

Because of prior convictions, Smith faced a sentence of 20 years to life if convicted as a habitual offender. But for more than seven years he has maintained his innocence.

The New Orleans Advocate reported that Smith faced a series of delays caused by prosecutors, his own lawyers, Hurricane Isaac and a mental competency hearing.

A hearing on Smith’s case had been scheduled by the Louisiana Board of Pardons & Parole for Jan. 25, 2018, but despite letters being sent to Smith and the Rivers Correctional Center, he was never transported to another prison to appear before the board via teleconferencing.

According to The New Orleans Advocate, Ken Pastorick, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Public Safety & Corrections, said Smith’s hearing was placed on hold because he changed his address without permission.

The publication said LaSalle Corrections and the state parole board did not respond to requests seeking comment.

Pastorick did say that the administration at Rivers Correctional Center failed to follow an order to transport Smith.

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

(Special from NorthStarNews Today) — National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day was Wednesday, February 7, but if you missed the parade that acknowledged the day, you’re not alone because there wasn’t one. There were some panel discussions. But discussions concerning HIV have largely gone silent because many of us erroneously believe the disease has been defeated.

Although HIV infections and HIV deaths have declined in recent years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates that 1.1 million people are currently living with HIV in the U.S. and 470,000 are African-American. This number includes 74,100 individuals who don’t know they are infected and are at higher risk of transmitting the virus.

The disease has continued to cut a deadly swath through the Black community since 1981 when it was first discovered. By U.S. region, the South has the highest rate of recent HIV infections, accounting for the majority of blacks newly diagnosed with the disease, which was 63 percent in 2016.

HIV/AIDS was the sixth-leading cause of death among Black men 20 to 44 years old and the fourth leading cause of death among Black women 35 to 44 in 2015. There are many reasons why this plague continues to spread almost unabated and almost unnoticed throughout the black community, but a significant reason is that the disease is not talked about as much as it was years ago. This relative lack of ongoing public discourse about HIV/ AIDS may have given rise to a false sense of safety in the Black community.

The other leading causes of death among Black men are heart disease, cancer, accidents and homicide.

Major reasons for the high rate of HIV infection include poverty, lack of access to health care, higher rates of some other sexually transmitted infections, lack of awareness of HIV status and stigma, stated the Kaiser Family Foundation in its report “Black Americans and HIV/AIDS: The Basics,” published this month.

“Black Americans are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS since the epidemic’s beginning,” reported Kaiser Family Foundation. “Although Blacks represent only 12 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 43 percent of HIV diagnoses; 43 percent of people living with HIV and 44 percent of people who have died from HIV, which is a rate greater than that of any other racial or ethnic group (see chart below).

The Black community’s lack knowledge about medicines that control the virus and their reluctance or refusal to take advantage of available treatment options has also contributed to HIV’s spread.

Kaiser published its report years after the introduction of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis, commercially called Truvada), which helps prevent individuals who are HIV-negative from contracting HIV. Although PrEP was introduced five years ago, it is not well known among Blacks.

Gilead Sciences, Inc., which manufactures the only Food Drug Administration-approved form of PrEP, reported the drug’s uptake was low among African Americans. Between 2012 and 2015, only 10 percent of all new PrEP prescriptions were written for Blacks.

Blacks also did not take the threat of HIV/AIDS seriously, probably because of a lack of information.

The late comedian Robin Harris told a joke about Black people wanting AIDS because they believed it was money being given to white gay men who at the time were the largest group suffering from HIV infections. “I want some of that aid,” said Harris,” mimicking a Black man in his comedy routine.

I worked in Philadelphia as a reporter for The Philadelphia Daily News. The Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists sponsored a luncheon on HIV/AIDS. We went to Black gay bars to tell people about the event.

A startling number said they would not attend because they did not care if they contracted HIV/AIDS.

A reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer said she wasn’t going to attend because she did not want to be in the same room with gay men and women. Needless to say, the luncheon was lightly attended.

But one woman who served food at the luncheon said she had heard about HIV/AIDS, but this was the first time it had been explained to her. She thanked the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists for hosting the event.

There are other reasons why HIV has spread unchecked in the Black community.

“While 84 percent of blacks are diagnosed, 46 percent remain in regular care and 43 percent are virally suppressed. Blacks also may be less likely to sustain viral suppression.” (This occurs when antiretroviral therapy, ART, reduces a person’s viral load, or HIV RNA, reduces the viral load to an undetectable level. Viral suppression does not mean a person is cured; HIV remains in the body, but it is checked).

Meanwhile, HIV is very much here. It’s an ever-present danger and one that’s getting worse though we’re being assured that it is getting better.

In 2015, African Americans had the highest age-adjusted HIV-death rate — 7.9 per 100,000, compared with 1.1 per 100,000 for whites.

Newly diagnosed Black gay and bisexual men are younger than their white counterparts, with those aged 13 to 24 accounting for 36 percent of new HIV diagnoses among Black gay and bisexual men in 2016 compared to 15 percent among whites.

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

It’s a triple-header for Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah who performs at the Contemporary Arts Center on three consecutive nights, Wednesday, February 21 through Friday, February 23. It looks like the number three could be in the stars for this talented trumpeter, flugelhornist and composer who released an impressive and ambitious series of albums in 2017 collectively titled “Centennial Trilogy.” Several of the musicians who contributed to these works will be on hand at the shows including pianist and Rhodes player Lawrence Fields, bassist Max Moran, saxophonist Stephen Gladney and percussionist Weedie Braimah with young drumming prodigy Kojo Roney joining the group. Adjuah came up under the tutelage of his uncle, saxophone great Donald Harrison Jr. and apparently understands the importance of bringing talented up-and-coming musicians into the fold. Roney, 13, by the way, has been startling audiences and critics alike since he was eight years old.

First up in the “Trilogy” series, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the initial, commercial jazz recording, was Rebel Rule. Flautist Elena Pinderhughes played an important role in the sound of this CD that was heavily-orchestrated and involved three drum elements – the trap set, percussion and drum machine. For his CAC, Adjuah has scaled down the group, which should please those who like to hear him stand up and blow. It’s hard to fault a too generous band leader though it’s his horn many want to hear.

On Diaspora, the second release of the “Trilogy,” Adjuah continues his exploration of what he describes as “stretch music,” which was the name of the album that preceded the series and gave listeners a taste of things to come.

CHRISTIAN SCOTT aTUNDE ADJUAH

As the term implies, the innovative jazz-based leader pulls from the limitless possibilities of genres and use of instrumentation and electronics to create elasticity in his approach. The forward-thinking trumpeter also turns to some of the artists who have been along on the journey, most notably flautist Elena Pinderhugh-es. On this album, Adjuah expands the rhythm section adding another percussionist, Chief Shaka Shaka, to reinforce the connections that link the African diaspora. Notably, of interest particularly on a local level, is “Our Lady of New Orleans (Herreast Harrison),” a Latin-tinged tune written by Adjuah in tribute to his grandmother, who is the widow of Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. Pianist Fields, who co-wrote the title cut with Adjuah, and will be with the group at the CAC, is outstanding throughout as he continually displays his attention to the melodies of the songs.

The provocative and thought-provokingly titled The Emancipation Procrastination stands as the third and final album of Adjuah’s “Centennial Trilogy.” It opens with the title cut and Adjuah at center stage. It’s where he belongs. Braxton Cook’s alto comes in on what could be described, especially in comparison with some other of Adjuah’s works, as a straight-up jazz format – trumpet solo, sax solo, piano solo. It’s both heady and totally easy to relate to. It, unlike many of the selections, relies little on electronics the absence of which allows for those all important empty spaces.

The trumpeter, playing brilliantly, reinvents Radiohead’s “Videotape” and has some much appreciated fun on another of his originals, the highly rhythmic and more casually executed and funky “Gerrymandering Game.” The flow of the album’s final cuts continues on the hard-boppin’, melodic and ambitious “New Heroes.” This tune has all the earmarkings of a classic with a melody that stays with you long past the time the music has come to an end.

The Emancipation Procrastination proves to be a continuum as well as the conclusion of Adjuah’s enterprising “Centennial Trilogy” though, undoubtedly, not his creative imagination and re-imagination of jazz’s possibilities.

At 34, going on 35, Adjuah, a graduate of NOCCA and the Berklee School of Music, oozes with duly-earned confidence. Even his attire screams. “Here I am.” The trumpeter boasts a musical “voice” and a style that even at age 22, when he released his 2006 Concord Jazz, Grammy-nominated album Rewind That, was in evidence. He took a cue from his saxophone playing uncle, Donald Harrison, in developing his own mode of expression in the creation of “stretch music” just as Harrison did when he introduced his own “nouveau swing.”

These shows are rare, New Orleans appearances by native son Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. The band is totally solid and being pared down to a sextet, compared to the leader’s larger ensembles at Jazz Fest, for example, should give him and everyone a chance to take advantage of the room as soloists as well as to mix it up with each other. Undoubtedly Adjuah, who will be blowing trumpet, reverse flugelhorn and sirenette, will hit on some of the material from the aforementioned albums. Then again, considering his inventiveness, Adjuah may throw in some surprises.

Showtime at the Contemporary Arts Center is 7:30 p.m.

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

In early February, the Federal Reserve delivered its most significant punishment of a major bank in a generation, sanctioning Wells Fargo for its pattern of customer exploitation.

A few blocks away, meanwhile, another of the giant bank’s regulators, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has recently displayed a different attitude: It has been softening on scandal-inundated Wells Fargo. After an edict about data handling from Mick Mulvaney, the man Donald Trump installed as acting head of the agency late last year, the bureau’s enforcement lawyers suddenly found their hands tied, according to three CFPB staffers. The attorneys weren’t permitted to upload information the bank supplied about its auto insurance business, one of the areas in which Wells Fargo has been accused of malfeasance.

Another probe of bad behavior — this one involving Wells Fargo’s treatment of its checking customers — has bogged down, ProPublica has learned. And a third investigation of the bank (for mortgage abuses) that was about to yield tens of millions of dollars in fines, according to Reuters, now languishes unresolved. Staffers fear they will be ordered to reduce the penalty that Richard Cordray, the previous head of the agency, approved before he left, according to people familiar with the probe.

The CFPB’s multifront retreat comes despite a December tweet from Trump — two weeks after he named Mulvaney to head the agency — in which the president proclaimed that “fines and penalties against Wells Fargo Bank for their bad acts against their customers and others will not be dropped.”

The enforcement slowdown isn’t just good news for Wells Fargo. Mulvaney’s team recently asked enforcement lawyers to prepare for a potential settlement of its lawsuit alleging that Navient, the gigantic student-loan servicer, abused borrowers, according to a high-level CFPB official. Pulling back before the case proceeds to trial would mark a stark reversal in one of previous regime’s marquee legal efforts. And the agency has recently dropped cases against multiple financial institutions it previously accused of harming customers.

In just over two months at the helm of the CFPB, Mulvaney has launched a sweeping set of initiatives. The agency is conducting a comprehensive internal review of enforcement and supervision. Mulvaney ordered a survey of financial firms to get their sense of the “burdens” that the CFPB’s investigative process places on them. He split the fair lending oversight operations in two, putting the heads of the office under his direct control. And he requested a budget of zero dollars, which was something of a gimmick since the bureau has a sufficient reserve, but a statement viewed as symbolic.

This account was drawn from conversations with current and former staffers, as well as numerous press reports. (No current staffers would talk on the record, citing worries about retaliation. Indeed, the bureau’s inspector general has recently launched an investigation into media leaks, into, as one staffer called it “Dumbledore’s Army,” after the secret band of wizards and witches who resist the evil Voldemort in the Harry Potter series.) The CFPB declined to make officials available for interviews or to respond to a lengthy set of questions sent by email.

The story the staffers tell reveals not just a drastic shift in philosophy; it’s an anatomy of a bureaucratic immobilization — one more often accomplished by well-placed monkey wrenches than by a change of laws.

****

The CFPB, famous as the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., was created as part of the Dodd-Frank reshaping of financial regulation. Until it was conceived after the financial crisis, no single overseer had responsibility to protect people from deceptive fees and predatory loans. But conservatives, along with the financial industry, assailed the agency immediately as unaccountable bureaucrats stomping into realms the government should not tread. Mulvaney, then a congressman, called the agency “a joke… in a sad, sick kind of way.

Now Mulvaney, 50, is in charge. He has made no concession to the notion that he is simply the “acting” director, or to the fact that this isn’t even his full-time job; he also heads the Office of Management and Budget. (Mulvaney spends Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at the CFPB, according to a high-level official.)

Mulvaney’s first significant move as CFPB chief seemed arcane, and came couched in language about protecting privacy. In early December, he froze the agency’s collection of private financial data, known as “personally identifiable information” or PII. Last year, the bureau’s inspector general issued a report saying the CFPB should handle data more carefully. However, the report was hardly scathing (it didn’t cite any examples of confidential data actually leaking out, for example) and its recommendations were modest and achievable.

Indeed, the report Mulvaney cited did not recommend a freeze on the use of personally identifiable information. For that reason and others, staffers view his ban as a pretext to curtail the bureau’s activities — and an effective one at that. “This is freezing enforcement,” said one CFPB attorney. If enforcement lawyers want to determine whether, say, Wells Fargo is taking advantage of checking account customers, they need to examine the checking accounts — which would include PII.

At first, no one knew the precise contours of the freeze. What could staffers still request? Did it cover only enforcement lawyers, or everybody? Some interpreted the order strictly, concluding they were not only barred from asking or subpoenaing financial institutions for new information but that it covered ongoing matters as well. According to three current CFPB employees, that meant lawyers on the Wells Fargo auto insurance investigation initially were not permitted to upload information the bank had delivered to them. Subsequently, the enforcement team on the matter was granted an exception and is now able to examine the material.

Mulvaney’s order has had effects beyond enforcement, hampering the bureau’s efforts to monitor financial firms for compliance with consumer protection rules and conduct research on financial products, according to several staffers. The freeze has even stymied state attorneys general, according to two CFPB staffers and one attorney for a state office. The bureau is responding more slowly to requests for information and giving less up than it did under the previous administration, according to two people inside the bureau and one lawyer at a state office.

Mulvaney and his appointees initially suggested the freeze was temporary. But on Dec. 22, Mulvaney sent an all-hands missive. After some holiday pleasantries, he wrote, “I’ve decided to continue the hold on the collection of PII and other sensitive data.” With some exceptions, he continued, “the default setting is ‘no.’” The extension surprised few inside the agency. Most staffers now expect it to last the duration of his tenure.

****

On Jan. 23, Mulvaney laid out his vision for the agency in a memo to the staff. “When I arrived at CFPB, I told folks that despite what they might have heard, I had no intention of shutting down the Bureau,” he began. He then criticized Cordray for having said “pushing the envelope is a loaded phrase, but that’s absolutely what we did.” But Cordray had never said that. The quote came from another CFPB employee quoted in an article in Politico. A Wall Street Journal op-ed that Mulvaney subsequently published based on the memo required a correction.

Mulvaney explained his philosophy in the memo: “We are government employees. We don’t just work for the government, we work for the people. And that means everyone: those who use credit cards, and those who provide those cards; those who take loans, and those who make them; those who buy cars, and those who sell them. All of those people are part of what makes this country great.”

Many staffers found Mulvaney’s sentiments concerning. “It’s a hell of a document,” said one employee. “I think it very much sets the direction for what he expects us to be doing. I know we are not to push the envelope but it pushes the envelope of ‘Corporations are people, too.’”

When Mulvaney circulated a draft mission statement in early February, staffers noted that it did not specifically mention protecting consumers. Instead, it hailed the notion of “Free, innovative, competitive and transparent consumer finance markets where the rights of all parties are protected by the rule of law and where customers are free to choose the products and services that best fit their individual needs.”

The turnabout in the CFPB’s mission has, unsurprisingly, rankled its previous chief. “We balanced interests as well but when people are cheating consumers, there’s no reason to have fair balance” of the cheaters’ interests with those of their victims, Cordray said in an interview with ProPublica.

CFPB enforcement decisions seem increasingly to be trending in favor of financial institutions. A probe into the breach at Equifax that permitted the records of 143 million people to be exposed has stalled. The CFPB dropped an investigation of World Finance, a subprime lender. The company had donated to Mulvaney when he was a South Carolina congressman. The CFPB said that the decision was made by the enforcement staff, not Mulvaney.

In at least one instance so far, Mulvaney has overruled his staff on an enforcement case. In mid-January, the CFPB voluntarily withdrew a case against four payday lenders. The bureau initially insisted the decision was made by staff attorneys — then confirmed to NPR that Mulvaney was involved. Mulvaney, who received significant contributions from payday lenders, made the decision over objections of the staff, according to a highly placed official within the agency. The official noted that state regulators are often out-gunned when trying to rein in high-cost lenders and need the CFPB’s help. “We spent four years developing this theory,” the official said, “and working really hard and checking our legal basis for it and coordinating with the states.” Then, with no warning and no explanation to the outside world, Mulvaney’s team ordered the bureau to dismiss the case.

*****

The CFPB was conceived as an independent agency, and under the previous administration, staffers took pains to keep the White House at arm’s length. “We were very careful to avoid aligning ourselves with the Obama White House,” said Elizabeth Corbett, who was acting chief of staff under Cordray. “We would take meetings if asked, but never shared anything we wouldn’t share with Congress.”

Under Mulvaney, by contrast, there’s no pretense that the bureau should be independent. For example, he ordered a report on which of Trump’s executive orders the agency could voluntarily comply with. And Mulvaney himself, of course, is not separate from the White House, given that the other agency he heads, OMB, is part of the executive office of the president.

Many bureau officials said they did not want the place to be politicized — by Republicans or Democrats. “What are we doing to our financial system in name of deregulation?” asked a current official. “When the situation flips, everyone expects people to go back to normal. Is President Liz Warren or President Sherrod Brown going to want their appointees to follow their directives? How are banks going to feel about that? It’s just bad for America.”

The CFPB’s integration into the administration seems most visible in the Navient case. In early December, Mulvaney held a meeting to review the bureau’s major enforcement matters. When the case against student-loan servicer Navient was mentioned, he said, “Oh, this is the big one,” according to a staffer. The comment seemed innocuous, and indeed this was one of the bureau’s biggest cases. The CFPB sued Navient, formerly part of Sallie Mae, in early 2017, accusing the nation’s largest student-loan servicer of cheating borrowers out of their right to lower repayments. Navient says the bureau’s allegations are unfounded.

Some Obama holdovers worried Mulvaney would back away from the case. During a cabinet retreat the first weekend of January, Mulvaney and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos met. Last fall, DeVos announced her department would stop helping the CFPB identify student-loan abusers, and the Education Department has moved to roll back protections for borrowers.

A few days later, Brian Johnson, a senior adviser to Mulvaney, met with Arthur Wayne Johnson, DeVos’ appointee to lead the federal government’s trillion-dollar student-loan operation (and the former head of a private student-loan company). It’s unclear whether the two discussed the Navient case. The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The following week, Eric Blankenstein, one of Mulvaney’s appointees, requested that the enforcement team on the Navient case begin to prepare settlement documents, according to one CFPB official. So far, the enforcement team has not made any decisions on whether to settle, according to people involved in the case, who note that extensive and unsuccessful attempts to settle the case were made before the bureau sued. Staffers said they now fear the bureau’s enforcement team will be ordered to agree to terms that let Navient off lightly.

****

When Trump tweeted about Wells Fargo, Cordray said he was almost heartened, suggesting that it “sent a signal they should not back away from enforcing the laws vigorously.” But Mulvaney appears not to be taking Trump’s tweet too seriously.

A potential settlement for alleged Wells Fargo mortgage fee abuses is in limbo. (That scandal was first revealed by ProPublica.) Another investigation, which the agency opened after The New York Times reported that the bank forced more than 800,000 customers to buy auto insurance they did not need, has gone nowhere since Mulvaney took over, according to one person familiar with the probe. The same is true of an early look at whether Wells Fargo has been charging customers who have to maintain a certain level of activity in their checking accounts to avoid fees. Though the customers had complied with the rules, the bank appears to have still charged them, according to a CFPB employee. The investigation is in the early stages and no decisions have been made. Since Mulvaney took over, it has not advanced significantly.

Wells said it is cooperating with regulators but declined to comment on ongoing enforcement matters.

Staffers in the bureau seemed dazed by the rapidity of the changes. But many remain stubbornly hopeful that the young bureau can survive the administration and return to what they view as their mission.

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) — For more than a year, the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, former North Carolina NAACP president, has been crisscrossing the country issuing a clarion call of resistance against arch-conservative forces that attack civil rights and economic justice gains.

He has sought to unify activists, social justice soldiers, concerned citizens, the oppressed and marginalized. He has spoken unrelentingly about the grave twin dangers posed by a hostile Trump administration and a reemerging white nationalism — both of which have targeted African Americans, poor whites, Latinos, Muslims, immigrants, members of the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups.

What America is witnessing, Rev. Barber has explained, is a modern-day incarnation and the product of more than a century of concerted efforts by white extremists to erase any progress made by African Americans, women and progressives in America.

“We’re witnessing a fundamental changing of our demographics around the world,” said Barber, president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. “We see extremist policies in America today and it’s driven by the growing blackening and browning of America and a fusion of every creed, color and class.”

He continues, “Those who embrace the Make America Great Again slogan are willing to work hard and cheat to undermine what is evolving in America,” said Barber, a prominent national activist and an unapologetic voice of resistance to the Trump administration’s hard move to the right. “This is white hegemony and white nationalism strengthened by enormous wealth.”

Trump, he asserts, isn’t the problem, but merely a symptom of America’s moral sickness. He told an audience of several hundred people at the “Real State of Our Union” panel discussion on Jan. 30 that America is in the midst of a Third Reconstruction.

We live in a season of moral crisis, Rev. Barber said. He says that one effective way to fight the greed, racism, poverty, denial of health care, xenophobia, voter suppression, warmongering and other ills is the formation of a New Poor People’s Campaign — a revival of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign that began 50 years ago in the spring of 1968, but was eclipsed by his assassination on April 4 that year.

Rev. Barber and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Network are co-chairs of the New Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Coalition organizers, including the Fight for $15 movement, said they plan to kick off rallies in cities around the mid-South beginning this spring to raise people’s consciousness about the plight of the nation’s poor.

In 2016, the federal government invested $183 billion in social programs but shuttled $630 billion dollars to the Department of Defense to pay for wars and maintenance of the country’s war machine. In contrast, Rev. Barber told the audience of several hundred at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, DC, that more than 140 million Americans – including 31 million children – are poor or near-poor. Tens of millions of adults are mired in poverty despite holding jobs, suffering food and housing insecurity and facing uncertainty because they don’t make enough to afford rent, food, medications or have the ability to care for themselves and their children.

Organizers of the anti-low wage organization, Fight for $15, had planned to join thousands of cooks and cashiers as they walked off their jobs Feb. 12 and marched in two dozen cities. Feb. 12 is the 50th anniversary of the historic Memphis sanitation strike.

Coalition members say they’re carrying on the fight for higher wages and union rights led by hundreds of Black municipal workers, whose 1968 walkout became a rallying cry of the Poor People’s Campaign led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. After the march, workers and their allies will participate in six weeks of direct action and non-violent civil disobedience beginning May 13, Mother’s Day.

The new campaign unites two of the nation’s most powerful social movements in a common fight for strong unions to lift people of all races out of poverty, organizers said. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the nation’s largest unions, is powering the new campaign. The union has been instrumental in helping organize fast-food workers across the nation; persuaded states and cities to raise their minimum wage; and has provided much of money and organizational muscle and money behind the Fight for $15 campaign.

The new campaign will follow part of the blueprint of Dr. King’s old campaign, Barber said, by building a movement across racial lines and across an array of issues. In his travels, he said, he has spoken to Native Americans, working-class and poor white, immigrants, gay, bisexual and straight people, all of whom have committed to the campaign and also to upending the oppression in the current system.

“These policies have hurt the worst of these,” said Rev. Barber. “In the Bible, there’s a greater adultery: whoring after other gods. They are against justice and they use their power to inflict pain on the poor and vulnerable. Congress allows him to be a distraction while he undermines the deconstruction of the American Experiment.”

Reminding the audience of the perils of American history, Barber said, “We act as though there’s no past. But this is the call and response of American history, the iconography of the American stream of history.”

He called cast-off Americans – criminalized children, the working poor, those whose medical care has been snatched by greedy politicians, and maligned immigrants – dry bones which will become the army of morality and justice to confront and defeat America’s dishonest and immoral politicians and moribund system.

“God told Ezekiel, ‘that’s your Army,” said Rev. Barber. “Preach to the dry bones and they’ll come together. I met a young woman in Seattle who said she’s the white trash they forgot to burn. I went to the Apache nations and sat in the circle with them, I met with national welfare rights people who said they’re ready for one more fight.”

“We’re going to make a Third Reconstruction,” he concluded. “We’re not going to give up on the American Project. Too many tears have been cried, too much blood has been shed, and there’s an army rising. We’ll be able to break every chain. They shouldn’t have called us ‘sh*t.’ We know how to take that stuff, make it fertilizer and build a new movement.”

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

Crowds, riders, and even some krewes have decamped to St. Charles Avenue. Only Mid-City’s Endymion draws attendance of equal measure to Uptown, and it may be in partnership with that Super krewe that Jefferson Carnival’s Samedi Gras salvation may lay.

Nevertheless, Parish President Mike Yenni and the Parish Council face difficult decisions to keep Carnival alive anywhere in the suburban parish for next year and beyond. Even allowing an alternative parade route through Old Metairie may not be enough. It might be necessary to push back “Family Gras” to the third weekend prior to Shrove Tuesday to keep participating suburban Krewe membership healthy.

Jefferson Parish boasted of only ten parades in 2018, with just one on the West Bank, compared with two dozen in the 1990s. Moreover, this dwindling number counts Mardi Gras Day’s two truck krewes and a children’s parade rolling on Vets. In fact, the Jeff Parish Council had to doll out $85,000 in public money to four krewes to help keep them alive. Athena, Caesar, and Centurions received $25,000, and Adonis, the lone remaining West Bank parade, got $10,000.

Partially, the subsidy sought to underwrite a regulation that the Parish Council implemented in the last decade, requiring that each parade feature at least eight bands. It is a hugely expensive mandate when most schools would rather march on St. Charles Ave. rather than Veterans Blvd; though the decision to use part of the Jefferson Hotel occupancy tax to give cash awards to the best bands (the so-called “Rhythm on the Route” prizes) has helped recruitment to Jefferson Parades.

“Our Carnival krewes are dying,” Parish Councilman Paul Johnston said to justify the payouts. “We need to help them.” Still, the payments might not be enough to save some of the Jefferson Parades. Recruiting new riders for the krewes—or just having people on the streets—on the final weekend of Carnival in Jefferson has become problematic at best.

The Jefferson krewes of Isis and Pandora (neither of whom received the Parish cash subsidy amidst many complaints) ride on the Saturday and Sunday before Mardi Gras, in the evening on the Veterans route, so they compete against Endymion and Bacchus. In the past, the pro-family atmosphere of Metairie was enough to draw crowds to see them, but in 2018, attendance proved anemic at best. The Orleans-based Super krewes drew people just as they have wooed younger riders from Metairie. Even having lead-in parades on Saturday, February 9 on Vets, and mounting no Lundi Gras parades on Vets this year, made little difference.

Only at “Family Gras” on the Veterans Route did this year’s crowds rival decades past, and mostly around the main music venue at the Plaza at Lakeside. The appeal of hearing and seeing Deacon John & the Ivories on Friday and Cyndi Lauper & John Oats (of Hall & Oats) as well as the other performers brought out the people on Friday and Saturday, February 2-3. Despite the rather boring appeal of a parade on the concrete, big box landscape that is Veterans Blvd., “Family Gras” works because it offers a family-friendly, musical party atmosphere in the center of the boulevard which is absent even on rival St. Charles Ave.

Regardless, even the concert-bolstered crowds have not stopped the largest and most successful Jefferson Krewe, Caesar, from falling from 800 members before Katrina to 550 today—despite the quality of the floats improving each Carnival season. This year featured a “Cartoon Rewind” theme led off with a giant Fred Flintstone and other anime characters and matching throws for each float. (Of course, dues paying members may think twice about renewing next year as the decision to rain-delay the parade to Sunday, riding in competition to the Superbowl, meant that spectatorship was very sparse. The “Family Gras” concerts concluded Saturday night this year for that reason.)

In contrast, Argus on Mardi Gras Day and the following Truck Parades on Veterans Blvd. have flourished by all accounts, in membership and attendance. For many suburbanites, of all races, braving the Orleans routes no matter how much Zulu and Rex call, is a bit too much on the day itself. Jefferson can continue to compete on Fat Tuesday, and following a suggestion to run at least one or two of the krewes on Metairie Road, the historic route effectively abandoned for over forty years, might bolster attendance on the weekend before Mardi Gras. The St. Patrick’s Day Parade just over a month later has no trouble drawing spectators to the affluent Old Metairie neighborhood.

The answer could be, “If you can’t beat them, join them.” It’s a two-fold solution. Primarily, schedule Jefferson’s “Family Gras” three weekends before Mardi Gras Day—when only the Krewe du Vieux runs through the French Quarter in Orleans that Saturday night.

Put simply, mount “Family Gras” at a time when no family-friendly Uptown spectacle competes. Such a move is not as radical as it sounds. In the years prior to Katrina, parades in Jefferson began three weekends out, with the non-defunct Krewe of Atlas often taking to Veterans Blvd. prior to any parade rolling Uptown. Carnival season starts on January 6 or Twelfth Night; what difference does three weekends or two weekends out from Shrove Tuesday really make?

The Inner East Bank would return to three weeks of family-friendly Mardi Gras rather than the post-Katrina two.

Orleans, which other than the Marigny to Vieux Carre satirical parades has no real riding krewes that weekend, surely would have no reason to compete. It would cost the new Mayor LaToya Cantrell nothing to pledge to keep “three weeks out” clear of parades outside of the French Quarter.

And, both she and Mike Yenni have something very real to gain—a reduction in policing costs. Of course, not every Jefferson Krewe is going to wish to give up its parading opportunity the weekend prior to Mardi Gras Day. So allow the Jefferson Saturday parades prior to Shrove Tuesday, which do not wish to move their parading day, to run prior to Endymion on the Mid-City route.

There is an economic motivation for Jefferson Parish to help this Orleans Parish parading route. Disproportionately, the visitors who come to see the Mid-City Super krewe often stay in hotels on the other side of the 17th Street Canal. Jefferson hotels are often closer to the beginning of the Endymion route than most Orleans Parish options, and often far cheaper.

In contrast, those attending parades on St. Charles Avenue rarely avail themselves of Jefferson Parish hotels. The distance is too far.

Moreover, Endymion has always been a Jefferson Parish-dominated parade. The emeritus Captain Ed Muniz was the Mayor of Kenner and a Jeff Councilman — as well as Mike Yenni’s political mentor.

Much of its leadership lives in the Parish. They would jump at such an offer, and so would the City Government upon reflection. Jefferson can convince Orleans to do this by offering to provide some token JPSO policing help to relieve the strained NOPD presence.

The compromise might even draw some krewes from St. Charles Avenue to join the fun. The krewe of Mid-City has long grumbled about being forced by the city from their traditional route to Uptown. Perhaps its leaders might seek to partner with Isis or Pandora to make the Mid-City route what Endymion declares it to be on its website, “Mardi Gras’ Main Event.”

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

]]>0adminhttp://www.louisianaweekly.com/?p=278132018-02-19T18:12:13Z2018-02-19T18:12:13ZContinue Reading »]]>More than 75 years after his passing, George Washington Carver remains a towering figure in Black history, American history, and in the fields of agriculture and science.

But as heralded as he was as an educator, agriculturalist, scientist and inventor, there is still much about his life and contributions that is not commonly known.

George Washington Carver, a Missouri-botanist and inventor, is widely known for the work he conducted after being recruited by Booker T. Washington to teach at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. He actively promoted alternative crops to cotton and methods to prevent soil depletion.

During his tenure as a professor at Tuskegee, Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes, as a source of their own food and to improve their quality of life.

Apart from his work to improve the lives of farmers, Carver was also a leader in promoting environmentalism. He received numerous honors for his work, including the NAACP’s Springarn Medal. In an era of very high racial polarization, his fame reached beyond the Black community. He was widely recognized and praised in the white community for his many achievements and talents. In 1941, Time magazine dubbed Carver a “Black Leonardo.”

Carver was born into slavery in Diamond Grove, Newton County, near Crystal Place, now known as Diamond, Missouri some time in the early 1860s. The exact date of his birth is uncertain and was not known to Carver – however it was sometime before slavery was abolished in Missouri in January 1865. His master, Moses Carver, was a German American immigrant who had purchased George’s parents, Mary and Giles, from William P. McGinnis on October 9, 1855, for $700.

When George was only a week old, he, a sister, and his mother were kidnapped by night raiders from Arkansas. George’s brother, James, was rushed to safety from the kidnappers. The kidnappers sold the slaves in Kentucky. Moses Carver hired John Bentley to find them, but he located only the infant George. Moses negotiated with the raiders to gain the boy’s return, and rewarded Bentley. After slavery was abolished, Moses Carver and his wife Susan raised George and his older brother James as their own children. They encouraged George to continue his intellectual pursuits, and “Aunt Susan” taught him the basics of reading and writing.

At the age of 13, due to his desire to attend the academy there, he relocated to the home of another foster family in Fort Scott, Kansas. After witnessing a Black man killed by a group of whites, Carver left the city. He attended a series of schools before earning his diploma at Minneapolis High School in Minneapolis, Kansas.

Carver applied to several colleges before being accepted at Highland University in Highland, Kansas. When he arrived, however, they rejected him because of his race.

In early 1888, Carver obtained a $300 loan at the Bank of Ness City for education. By June he left the area. In 1890, Carver started studying art and piano at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa. His art teacher, Etta Budd, recognized Carver’s talent for painting flowers and plants; she encouraged him to study botany at Iowa State Agricultural College in Ames, Iowa. When he began there in 1891, he was the first Black student. Carver’s Bachelor’s thesis was “Plants as Modified by Man,” dated 1894.

Iowa State professors Joseph Budd and Louis Pammel convinced Carver to continue there for his master’s degree. Carver did research at the Iowa Experiment Station under Pammel during the next two years. His work at the experiment station in plant pathology and mycology first gained him national recognition and respect as a botanist. Carver taught as the first Black faculty member at Iowa State.

In 1896, Booker T. Washington, the first principal and president of the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), invited Carver to head its Agriculture Department. Carver taught there for 47 years, developing the department into a strong research center and working with two additional college presidents during his tenure. He taught methods of crop rotation, introduced several alternative cash crops for farmers that would also improve the soil of areas heavily cultivated in cotton, initiated research into crop products (chemurgy), and taught generations of Black students farming techniques for self-sufficiency.

During Washington’s last five years at Tuskegee, Carver submitted or threatened his resignation several times: when the administration reorganized the agriculture program, when he disliked a teaching assignment, to manage an experiment station elsewhere, and when he did not get summer teaching assignments in 1913–1914. In each case, Washington smoothed things over.

Washington praised Carver in his 1911 memoir, My Larger Education: Being Chapters from My Experience. Washington called Carver “one of the most thoroughly scientific men of the Negro race with whom I am acquainted.”

While a professor at Tuskegee, Carver joined the Gamma Sigma chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. He spoke at the 1930 Conclave that was held at Tuskegee, Alabama, in which he delivered a powerful and emotional speech to the men in attendance.

From 1915 to 1923, Carver concentrated on researching and experimenting with new uses for peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, pecans, and other crops, as well as having his assistants research and compile existing uses. In these years, he became one of the most well-known African Americans of his time.

Carver developed techniques to improve soils depleted by repeated plantings of cotton. Together with other agricultural experts, he urged farmers to restore nitrogen to their soils by practicing systematic crop rotation: alternating cotton crops with plantings of sweet potatoes or legumes (such as peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas).

In 1916, Carver was made a member of the Royal Society of Arts in England, one of only a handful of Americans at that time to receive this honor.

Although he only published six agricultural bulletins after 1922, he published articles in peanut industry journals and wrote a syndicated newspaper column, “Professor Carver’s Advice.” Business leaders came to seek his help, and he often responded with free advice. Three American presidents — Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt — met with him, and the Crown Prince of Sweden studied with him for three weeks. From 1923 to 1933, Carver toured white Southern colleges for the ‘Commission on Interracial Cooperation.

Carver had been frugal in his life, and in his 70s he established a legacy by creating a museum of his work, as well as the George Washington Carver Foundation at Tuskegee in 1938 to continue agricultural research. He donated nearly $60,000 (equivalent to $1,043,121 in 2017) in his savings to create the foundation.

Carver never married. At age 40, he began a courtship with Sarah L. Hunt, an elementary school teacher and the sister-in-law of Warren Logan, Treasurer of Tuskegee Institute. This lasted three years until she took a teaching job in California.

Upon returning home one day, Carver took a bad fall down a flight of stairs; he was found unconscious by a maid who took him to a hospital. Carver died January 5, 1943, at the age of 78 from complications (anemia) resulting from this fall. He was buried next to Booker T. Washington at Tuskegee University. Due to his frugality, Carver’s life savings totaled $60,000, all of which he donated in his last years and at his death to the Carver Museum and to the George Washington Carver Foundation.

On his grave was written, “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.”

Even as an adult Carver spoke with a high pitch. Historian Linda O. McMurry noted that he “was a frail and sickly child” who suffered “from a severe case of whooping cough and frequent bouts of what was called croup.”

McMurry also examined the theory that Carver’s vocal pitch was due to being castrated as a child. She noted that persistent rumors held he was castrated either by his kidnappers or his owner Moses Carver. She maintained these accounts were unlikely as “A person castrated before puberty almost never displays any secondary sexual characteristics and seldom grows to normal stature. While Carver’s voice never deepened, he reached normal height and grew facial hair.” She also pointed out that it was extremely unlikely that Carver would have maintained affection for Moses if he had castrated him, but he “retained obvious affection for Moses…After he left Diamond he returned on several occasions to visit the Carvers, even after Susan’s death.”

Carver was not expected to live past his 21st birthday due to failing health. He lived well past the age of 21, and his Christian belief deepened as a result.

Many honors and awards were bestowed upon Carver over the course of his lifetime including the following:

• 1969, Iowa State University constructs Carver Hall in honor of Carver – a graduate of the university.

• 1943, the U.S. Congress designated January 5, the anniversary of his death, as George Washington Carver Recognition Day.

Many school districts across the U.S. have schools named in honor of Carver.

On July 14, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated $30,000 for the George Washington Carver National Monument west-southwest of Diamond, Missouri, the area where Carver had spent time in his childhood. This was the first national monument dedicated to an African American and the first to honor someone other than a president. The 210-acre national monument complex includes a bust of Carver, a ¾-mile nature trail, a museum, the 1881 Moses Carver house, and the Carver cemetery. The national monument opened in July 1953.

Carver was featured on U.S. 1948 commemorative stamps. From 1951 to 1954, he was depicted on a commemorative half dollar coin. A second stamp honoring Carver, of face value 32¢, was issued on February 3, 1998 as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series.

In 1977, Carver was elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. In 1990, Carver was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1994, Iowa State University awarded Carver a Doctor of Humane Letters. In 2000, Carver was a charter inductee in the USDA Hall of Heroes as the “Father of Chemurgy.”

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed George Washington Carver as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 2005, Carver’s research at the Tuskegee Institute was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society.

This article originally published in the February 19, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.